and prayed with poppet for the day to move to glorious l.a.,and then one morning she herself was up there, up on ventura, ready and hotand they dragged all her ragged screams and frail fractured chords up the sepulveda passand damned them, transformed to plastic pop-synth for that brainwashed mass

wearing success, striking a pleather vest pose in a joyhouse of artificial banshees,a megalopolis of architecture hair, glam-sweat nights through raccoon eyesand so it was placed in this grimoire: a request released, a request granteduntil a cop stole her underwear, she became disenchanted

that the big picture was proved saccharine and synthetic,that the white grand piano spoke her false name (and learn in this, young one),that the tremors and faults shook under her knee-high bootsuntil palm trees pirouetted and curtseyed all along sunset, hidden stricken roots

now she pivots, twirling under griffith park, dizzying her glitched compass,remembers her eastern roots, nights of talking to cats like a proper witchwith that same spritely voice, muttered the ancient potent wordsthat talented all the nightmares away, kept those fractured truthful chords,

kept the eyeliners and sorcery, kept the home in the hills,kept the link to our timeworn sorority, and stepped closer to her museand if you find yourself alone and away and surrounded by artificial flakesshine with your sisters, and mother earth, and start your own little earthquakes

Jake Tringali lived up and down the East Coast, and then up and down the West Coast, and now back in his home city of Boston. Runs rad restaurants. Thrives in a habitat of bars, punk rock shows, and a sprinkling of burlesque performers.

First published in 2014. Journals include Catch & Release, Boston Poetry Magazine, Indiana Voice Journal, and thirty-five other fine periodicals.